Unmarked Mates

Chapter 48: "There is no beast more cruel than man"

I struggle to withhold him just a moment more, and he will break the chair or my arm; I try to use the blade in my boot again, but I miss, fuck, what else I can...

Julius's wolf lands on the Alpha almost without any noise, biting into his back. Both wolves roll to the back but stand up extremely quickly to jump at each other; they collide in the air and fall to the floor with a loud bank, their jaws are sunk into each other, and it's difficult to say when one wolf starts. The second ends, and they are constantly moving as snarls echo in the room. And yet Julius is smaller and for sure at a disadvantage, so I must hurry. I grip my jaw to take control of the pain. I'm sure I have some broken ribs as I move as fast as I can into the direction of the bed, where the corps of the Luna still lies.

"Ravenswood!" I scream, and his wolf's head snaps up, and the set of two red eyes look at me. I raise my knife to cut the neck of his Luna, and he falls for it, throwing Julius to the wall and running fast in my direction. He jumps on my pushing me onto the bed with him on top of me, and that's when my booby trap set ahead works.

Heavy, silver web falls from the bed canopy, it's also drenched in wolfbane, so he howls in pain as it sinks into his skin. I wish I could stab my knife into him, but he bites into my arm, and it breaks. I whimper in pain, but I wrap my legs around his body, holding the web tightly wrapped around him and myself. He bits more into my arm. I'm fortunate that because of the web, he can't move his head because I'm sure my arm would be already ripped away from my body.

Julius comes to my rescue dragging him away from me but thankfully still wrapped in the web. When Alpha's weight is no longer on me, I managed to stand up, and the two of us pull the web stronger, successfully trapping him inside it. He growls, then howls in agony, and soon the silver forces him back into his human form.

He pants hard, coughing with blood, almost as hard as me and Julius standing over him. I see in his eyes the confusion I'm so familiar with when I sink my knife into his stomach. All of them had the same confusion on their faces every time I took their life away from them.

"I wish you will be reunited with your Luna," I say as he struggles to move, and his blood leaves his body.

Julius shifts; he's bleeding and notices my look.

"It will heal, and you?" he says.

"My bones will need more time," I say. "Why did you enter?"

According to our plan, he was supposed to wait near in case anything went wrong, but he came too quickly, in my opinion.

"I've noticed that the girl hadn't left the packhouse."

We both look around and notice her curled in the corner. Julius comes to her and gently tries to calm her down. I'm sure she is scared as hell, but I think despite that alright. We should hurry now and burn this place to the ground and...

I look at the wardrobe door the Alpha went to previously, and something doesn't add to me. And that's when I understand what. According to the packhouse blueprints,  there shouldn't be a wardrobe here, but the door to the additional staircase, leading, I think to the attic.

"Julius, can you wrap my hand close to my body so I don't put too much strain on it? Let's check what's behind that door."

He does as I ask; we don't look at the dead body as we break the lock. The girl goes with us; I guess she is too scared to oppose us in any way. We go up, and I'm sure we are going in the right direction because I smell the odor of blood, dirty bodies, and excrement. Bad sign, a very bad sign. Julius seems agitated more and more the closer we get to the stench.

The view I am faced with in the attic is one of the most hideous I've seen in my entire life.

Despite the odor, I'm welcomed with darkness and sounds of whimpering. Julius pushes the light switch, and to our horror, we see cages. Ten metal cages are the size of a big chest, and there is a naked girl in every single one.

They all are pale, covered in dirt and scars or wounds. Curled, not looking at us, they all carry heavy collars on their necks, festering wounds from under them. Julius pants hard as he whispers:

"Girl, mindlink your Beta and a warrior name Chuck at tell them to come here instantly. Tell them that Julius needs them here at once."

She nods as tears go down her face. I look around and spot the set of keys hanging close to the door. I take it and kneel before the first cage to open it. The girl inside whimpers, wrapping her hands around herself, and that's when I notice her big pregnant stomach. Fucking son of the bitch, fucking monster.

When Beta and Chuck enter, all the cages are already open, and yet none of the girls have made any attempt to leave their cages. Two of them have infants with them; the older one look like almost a year, and the second is a newborn. Two more girls are heavily pregnant.

"Oh Goddess," the Beta whispers as Chuck runs to the cage where the girl with the newborn baby is sitting.

"Please, it's me, Chuck; please look at me. It's me, your brother," he whispers, and she glances at him, still trembling like a leaf and huddling at the end of her cage.

"Beta," I say slowly; my whole body is in pain, but we don't have time; we must work quickly" This is how it happened. Alpha forced that girl to stay after the party because he wanted to rape her."

"...but before he did it, he had to leave the pack because Alexa called him and asked to meet with him in the restaurant nearby to discuss something, so he locked her unconscious in his wife's bedroom and cut her link with the pack," Julius continues.

"Girl," I say, and she looks at me." When you woke up, you were looking for the way out and managed to break the lock and go upstairs when you found those girls. You managed to run away from here using a ventilation system. It's possible; we checked the blueprints."

"And I notified my Beta, and none of you were ever here," she whispers, and Julius nod.

"We will take Alpha's body far away from here and make sure he will never be found," he says, looking at Beta and Chuck. "And you will report his crimes to the Council and take power legally. They will believe that he returned from his meeting with Alexa, noticed that his secret was exposed, and ran away to avoid punishment. He will never be seen anywhere again. Ensure that none of the patrols will stop your Alpha's car."